Sometimes the things that bug you the most are the things you should be paying attention to. A small thing like answering the phone can make a huge difference to your business.

Times are hard. There is no doubt about that and when times are hard, companies begin to search for things that can bring them the success that they may be lacking. Looking for ways to cut costs and implement savings throughout the company, many organizations have turned to automated answering machines to save them time and money. And, truth be told, there are cost savings with these systems. Many companies no longer have a receptionist to answer the phones, they have replaced her with a very fancy system with lots of options and foreign languages and professional-sounding voices. Obviously, you don't even have to think about it, you really just need to talk to a real person? It’s one of my biggest pet peeves but relative to my own business, I looked right past it with dollar signs in my eyes.

Have you ever been talking to a friend and had them comment favorably on an automated attendant phone answering device? Few people I know ever had a positive thing to say about their answering system experience? Probably not! Everyone has a story about punching several buttons and never getting a real person on the phone, about being sent in a circle through every button on the dial and then at the end of it they had to leave a message that nobody ever answered.

So, why, then do companies continue to use these systems when everyone knows that nobody likes them? Well, company owners are no different than anybody else. They get sold a product by someone who promises that it will save the company money by eliminating the need for a receptionist. They buy into the claims of efficiency wherein a caller can choose with whom he wants to speak, push a button and be directed straight to that person. They believe that by telling a customer to push 2 for Spanish, they will capture a new section of the market. The problem with this is that it just never happens quite that way! We thought we would look like one of those bigger companies…and we were right!

Take a little time during this down economy to actually track the success of your automated call-in system. Call it yourself from outside the office. See how well each option actually works. Track the number of calls that hang up before they get to the right person in your system. Find our from your customers what they think of you voice attendant, see if they were felt like a potential customer that needed to be dealt with and qualified first by telling them what buttons to push. We discovered this the hard way. We were recording calls via our online marketing program. 75% of them were just hanging up! We were trying to drive business to our meeting space in Dayton Ohio and 75% of our clients couldn’t stand the phone answering system. I don’t know why, we gave them 9 options to consider. We only have 8 people to route those nine numbers to. I see how funny that is now.

You may find that having a friendly, live person answering the phone, listening to the customer and helping them get to the right person in your company will improve your customer service immensely. Most owners understand the bird in the hand is the customer on the phone. No customer stays happy pushing buttons in search of help!

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It seems that everyone in business is using an “EZ phone dialer” (also known as a web-based phone dialer system) to boost their sales and effectively follow up on customer contacts. The owners of some EZ phone dialer services make it sound effortless; they say all you have to do is record your message, upload it to their system, sit back and watch the money roll in. Some of these automated phone dialer systems make it even simpler – if you don’t yet have a service or product to sell, they offer the option of becoming a salesperson for their system. While this method of generating sales does work, like everything else in life, the more effort you put into it, the more you will get back. Tweaking your phone dialer script to get the right message to the right list of contacts will not only increase your success rate, it will keep your future customers happier.

Getting the right message to the right customers can take a little trial and error. First, make sure that you have uploaded or purchased a list of contacts that is appropriate to your service. For example, there is no point in attempting to pitch hair-regret products to twenty-something women. Second, make your message short and interesting, but genuine. The human touch matters here. People want to feel they have been contacted by a real person who really cares about what they do for a living, not a studio voice talent. Once you have created a script that works, don’t get complacent. The most successful EZ phone dialer users keep track of how many sales each message broadcast generates. Then they go over the message to make small improvements, broadcast it again, and compare the numbers. If you keep these simple tips in mind, getting sales from your EZ phone dialer is “EZ-er” than you may think

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